There is a world-wide need for more adequate, low-cost housing--especially emergency housing to shelter disaster victims who have lost their homes to hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, or loss of income. The ultimate cost of providing for these homeless can be dramatically minimized if the emergency housing available to them can be later converted economically into permanent, comfortable housing as time and financing permit. The present designs described herein will make this conversion viable. The present invention--when converted from a temporary, emergency shelter into a permanent structure--will meet most land restrictions, building codes, sanitary standards and energy efficiency standards. This inventor believes that his improvements in the construction arts will permit the construction of adequate housing for the disadvantaged and homeless at low cost using widely available materials and simple techniques requiring little or no skilled labor. Hopefully, even better low cost housing than this present invention will be achieved in the future as new materials and methods based on the present invention are developed. Possibly even more important will be the change in the mind-set of the human populace with respect to the external appearance of a dwelling. In the past, attempts to employ materials such as styrofoam and gunite-applied concrete to provide rapidly constructed, economic structures were negated owing to the non-conventional external appearance of such structures. Even more illustrative is the history of the Quonset Hut which, while functional and low cost, is rarely used in residential areas because is doesn't look like a conventional house.
There are many panel-type building systems. However, to my knowledge, none of them provide the quick snap-together efficiency from the base to the finished roof as is embodied in this invention. Nor are the assembly techniques as simple so that they may be used by unskilled laborers employing one or two simple, common tools. Furthermore, all other snap-together panel systems of which I am aware unfortunately allow slippage between their longitudinal axes unless they are bolted, screwed or riveted to some other stabilizing part. In some of these designs when slippage is not controlled, a force such as a wind load can cause the walls to rack.
This undesirable feature is found in conventional construction wherein 2".times.4" vertical supporting wood studs are sheathed with 1".times.6" tongue-and-groove siding material; in order to control said slippage between the sheathing under high wind loads, diagonal sway bracing is employed. This condition is also corrected in conventional construction by using plywood sheathing nailed to the vertical supporting studs so that when a torque load created by wind force is applied to the wall, the entire cross-section of the plywood is placed into a state of compression and tension, thereby successfully resisting the torque caused by the wind force. This latter force-resistant construction technique resembles the physics inherent in the panel system herein described. That is, the snap-together panel system here present provides fasteners across the top and bottom of the panels, thus placing the cross-section of the central plane of the panel--further reinforced by its formed longitudinal edges that form the snap-together seams--into a state of compression and tension, thereby resisting undesirable torque loading that could otherwise cause structural failure.